On the same line of thought, one thing one of my casual star wars watching friends noticed is that to them Rey felt more like she was a supporting character for Luke and Kylo’s stories, rather than the lead character she was touted to be in TFA, and I can’t say I disagree. Now, as a director I can’t say my own ideas would be any better than RJ’s, but my idea to fix it would’ve been to at least give Rey her own plot point in having little to no control over the force. Like her force abilities are growing faster than she is able to keep them in check.
I feel doing that, it’d change the dynamic of Luke and Rey’s lessons, with Rey growing more frustrated that Luke is focusing more on telling her why the Jedi were bad than actually helping her with her problems. It’d also give Rey a reason to turn to Kylo for help, as he could actually be trying to teach her what she needs to learn, rather than a vague sense of, “I still feel good in him.”
This has been raised by some fans. I do remember someone making a video of how Rey and Jyn lacked agency in TFA and R1 and were in the story just because, or because one character needed them at one point or two. I would say Finn has this same problem in TFA, although not as bad as Rey.
In a Blackened Mantle-like fanedit, you might make the FO obsessed with capturing Finn because, as a guy who has been in Starkiller Base and under Phasma’s direct orders, he may leak stuff to the Resistance or reveal the existence of SB. So you might reduce or remove BB8 (I find the droid a much weaker, flanderized, irrelevant to the story and annoying version of Artoo) from the story and instead make the story about Finn and Rey.